With criminal intent: reading detective fiction

This course will consider how detective fiction/crime novels relate to the societies and periods in which they are set. It will regard this work not as mere escapist entertainment, but as a useful lens through which to examine broader issues. The first lecture will give an account of the ‘golden age’ of British crime fiction (essentially the interwar years), note its characteristics and conventions – the amateur sleuth, the cosy settings, the limited cast of suspects – and briefly consider some key practitioners: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh. The second lecture will consider two major American additions to the crime fiction library: the ‘hard-boiled’ or ‘private eye’ genre represented by Dashiel Hammet, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald and the ‘police procedural’ (like Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct series). The course will then consider the prominence of Oxford as a setting for British crime fiction and include discussion of the Inspector Morse novels and television series. The final lectures will look at South African crime fiction, referring to novels by James McClure and Deon Meyer, with police officers at the heart of their novels: Tromp Kramer and Sergeant Mickey Zondi in McClure’s series, and Mat Joubert, Bennie Griesel, Mbali Kaleni and their colleagues in Meyer’s books